Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship

"I had done this one which is now in the Tate Gallery of an upturned boat with three survivors clinging to it, the centre figure being a negro* who was holding the other two up, all completely sort of frozen. When I submitted it to the War Artists’ Committee they wouldn’t exhibit it in the National Gallery where there was a general show of war artists’ work because they said it wasn’t good for recruiting for the Merchant Navy. I asked various Merchant Navy men I knew and they said ‘That is absolutely ridiculous.’ It’s just the kind of picture they did want and there was no shortage of recruiting for the Merchant Navy.’"

"In addition, the examples (cited above) of Carel Weight and Frances Macdonald being requested to delete from their paintings evidence of public panic (a part of most people's experience), suggests that the WAAC was not at all eager to acquire images that were truly nasty. Indeed, Richard Eurich's 'Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship' was actually removed from exhibition at the National Gallery because of Admiralty objections that it would discourage enlistment in the Merchant Marine. It also seems significant that, of all the war artists, only Leslie Cole (first in Malta in 1943, and later in Greece and Germany) showed a pronounced interest in the horrific, culminating in his oil paintings at the Belsen concentration camp (illustration 20)."

* We recognise the sensitive nature of the word used in this text, and reproduce it in the knowledge that it ‘was of its time’ and that the artist would not have used it today.